Ever walk through the grocery store looking for something specific and then have an a-ha moment and change your mind?

That hasn’t happened to me lately. But I did have something similar happen not too long ago!

I was on my way home from a Saturday errand day with my mom and she needed to stop at a grocery store. Since I don’t shop at that store often, I took a few minutes to look around and see if there was anything interesting on sale. Lo and behold, there was a gigantic display of sushi on special for 50 per cent off! They had just been packaged that morning, and they were already on clearance. Score! I’m not a huge sushi eater. I don’t like fish, but I do love the vegetarian rolls. Alex is pretty adventurous and will try pretty much anything. We haven’t had sushi lately – mostly because there isn’t a sushi restaurant closer than 40 minutes away, and we never think to go there for dinner – so I was in the mood for some Asian fare. I picked up three kinds of sushi: avocado, spicy jalapeno roll and spicy California roll for us to try. I already had frozen edamame from Costco, so it was just a matter of another little appetizer to round off our Asian-inspired feast. Racking my brain to come up with something, it dawned on me. My favourite thing to order at Japanese/Thai restaurants? Spring rolls! I had almost everything I needed, except for bean sprouts and egg roll wrappers. Perfect!

Spring rolls are pretty easy to customize. I looked up a few different recipes and modified this one to suit our tastes and what we had in the fridge already. Here’s what you need to make about eight large spring rolls:

– A pack of spring roll or egg roll wrappers (usually found in the produce section of the grocery store. I opted for the larger egg roll variety because they’re easier to roll and great for tons of other apps, like the buffalo chicken egg rolls I made a couple weeks ago! Store the rest in a zip-loc bag in the fridge.)
– 1 cup of chopped carrots
– 2 cups of shredded cabbage. I used leftover bok choy
– a giant handful of bean sprouts
– a teaspoon of pepper
– two teaspoons of minced garlic
– four to five tablespoons of soy sauce
– a couple of chopped green onions
– about half a pound of ground beef or pork. I used a combination of both that I had already cooked and leftover from pasta the night before.
– four tablespoons of vegetable oil, divided

1. If your meat is raw, brown it in a frying pan. Drain and set aside. If you’re using meat that’s already cooked, skip to step 2.

2. Heat two tablespoons of the vegetable oil in a large pan and add the minced garlic. Fry until golden brown and fragrant, about two minutes. Side note: I usually use a garlic press or chop up my garlic really finely, but I saw a gigantic container of minced garlic at Costco for FIVE DOLLARS and couldn’t pass it up. I mean! It’s so convenient, and what a deal. About a half a tablespoon of minced garlic equals one garlic clove, in case you’re wondering.3. Add the carrots, cabbage, bean sprouts, green onions, pepper, soy sauce and stir well. Saute for about two or three minutes.4. Once combined, add the cooked beef and/or pork to meld the flavours. Transfer to a bowl and let the mixture cool while you prepare the wrapping station. Note: I learned the hard way that assembling the egg rolls does not work when the filling is hot. Give it lots of time to cool.

5. You’ll need three plates for this next part: one small plate with a bit of water, a large plate for wrapping and a large plate to keep the wrapped spring rolls.6. Lay a wrapper in front of you with a corner pointing toward you. Spread two or three tablespoons of the filling horizontally in the middle of the wrapper. Dip your fingers in the water and line all edges of the wrapper with water. Fold the bottom of the wrapper up over the filling and gently press down. Fold in both sides of the wrapper. Roll the spring roll up toward the top of the wrapper and seal all of the edges with water.7. When all of your spring rolls are assembled, you’re ready to fry! These probably would be great baked too, but I was opting for authenticity over health in this case. 😉 Heat two tablespoons of vegetable oil in the frying pan until it’s hot. Turn the heat down to medium. Lay the spring rolls in the pan in a single layer and fry on all sides until they’re golden brown.

8. Transfer to a paper towel-lined plate and pat with paper towels to absorb the excess oil and serve with your favourite dipping sauce (I recommend sweet chili or plum sauce!).This is an awesome basic recipe. They were perfect when dipped into sweet chili sauce, but when plain, they could have used an extra kick. I think next time I’ll chop up a chili pepper really fine and add it in for a little bit of heat. But you could certainly customize these in any way – add more veggies, or even shrimp! They were the perfect addition to our Asian-inspired dinner.

They were crispy on the outside and had the perfect amount of crunch on the inside. Maybe next time I’ll get really adventurous and try to make my own sushi! 😉

My ideal weekend includes a productive Saturday and a relaxing Sunday. I usually spend my Saturday mornings cleaning the house (I try to do it a little bit at a time through the week, but it never seems to happen that way) and catching up on laundry. If Alex is working, I might spend the day with my mom at Costco or go grocery shopping/errand running. If he’s home, we’ll make breakfast together (and by that I mean he’ll make breakfast while I drag my lazy butt out of bed!), and work on house projects, wander around Home Depot or some other home improvement store, or take Stella for a walk. I like getting things done on Saturday so that we can take it sloooow on Sunday.

This weekend was a little bit different. On Friday night after work, my mom and I took off for a little shopping getaway. She found a great deal on a hotel in Buffalo and we went over for the night for some shopping and mother-daughter time! My mom and I are besties . . . seriously! It was so nice to have some time for just the two of us. We hit great some great sales and had some great eats! Saturday morning we had brunch at the hotel. Mom had a three-cheese fritatta and I opted for the buffalo-chicken breakfast panini. They were both fabulous, and we were absolutely stuffed!

Our meals kept us going as we shopped until we dropped – allllll day! We finally stopped around 4:30 on Saturday at Panera Bread for dinner before we went home. A cup of broccoli-cheddar soup and half a Frontega chicken panini for me . . . and a cup of French onion soup and a spinach power salad for mama!

Mmm, I love me some Panera. It’s finally making its way to Canada with a few locations near me, but I haven’t been to any of them yet. Probably a good thing that it’s not near where I live . . . I’m sure I’d visit far too often!

Anyway, we made it home and then I met up with Alex at our friends’ house before going to a Buck ‘n Doe for friends of ours. It was a super fun, but late night! What made it worse is that we changed the clocks ahead early this morning. I love that our days will be longer, but hated that we lost an hour today! Sundays always go by way too quickly, which is why I haaaate them, and today seemed to fly by. We did have a nice relaxing day, had lunch with friends and a delicious steak dinner, but it went by way too fast. I could have used an extra hour!

Earlier last week – before this beautiful weather hit! – I had a craving for some warm, soul-pleasing food. You know what I’m talking about, right? The meal that usually takes all day to prepare; one that fills the house with the best smell. But it was a weeknight, and I just wasn’t in the mood to get fancy. On nights like these, chicken is usually my go-to. I was smart and took out a couple of boneless, skinless chicken breasts to defrost the night before. When I got home, I decided I would make easy lemon-pepper chicken with asparagus and potato wedges.

I started by combining about a teaspoon of lemon pepper seasoning with a teaspoon of garlic powder. I sprinkled it all over the chicken breasts and popped them back in the fridge until I was ready to cook.

Meantime, I cut three medium-sized potatoes into wedges and soaked them in water for about an hour.

This releases some of the starch in the potatoes, so that they become extra crispy when you bake them. Soak them for as long as you can – at least 30 minutes – and pat them dry with paper towels thoroughly. Drizzle some EVOO and seasonings of your choice – I opted for plain old seasoning salt. Lay them on a non-stick sprayed baking sheet, and pop them in the oven at 400 F for about 20 minutes, flipping halfway through.

I put my asparagus in the oven at the same time as the potatoes. Baked vegetables are our fave around here. Whether it be broccoli, asparagus, cauliflower or even Brussels sprouts, a drizzle of EVOO and lots of salt and pepper does the trick for seasonings, and baked at 400 F for about 20 minutes keeps the crunch of the veggies that I love so much.

I decided to brown the chicken in a frying pan for about three or four minutes on each side to get an extra-crispy coating, then finished them in the oven along with the potatoes and asparagus. The chicken took about 15 more minutes in the oven, but be sure to cook them until they are no longer pink inside.

This was a simple, satisfying dinner that came together quickly. I had time to play with since Alex wasn’t due to arrive home until about two hours after I got home from work, but it could easily come together even quicker. The potato wedges were crispy, the asparagus was crunchy and vibrant green, and the chicken was perfectly spicy and tangy! A super soul-satisfying meal.

I can’t believe it’s already so late – I know we only lost one hour, and it’s worth it, but I always find this is a weird adjustment! Here’s to a great week of sunshine and good eats!

I love experimenting and trying new things in the kitchen. Sometimes things don’t work out – like my brownie dessert from a few weeks ago. But sometimes, I hit it out of the park. Crunchy Buffalo Ranch Chicken is one of those recipes.

I work for two food trade magazines and, as part of my job, from time to time I am required to attend industry trade shows. At one show, I visited a company’s booth for a demonstration and received a bag of these crispy fried onions. They’re the crunchy garnish that restaurants often serve over top of salads, burgers and steaks. The bag sat in my pantry before I realized that the expiry date was soon approaching and I should try something with them. The back of the bag had recipes on it, including one that used the onions as breadcrumbs for chicken. When I turned to the trusty ole’ Internet, I found that other people had done this with rave reviews, and made some modifications to the recipe.

I started by cutting two boneless, skinless chicken breasts into nugget-sized pieces. You could leave the chicken breasts whole, but this ensured more of the crunchy coating covered each bite.

Prepare your dredging station. My usual breading process starts with dipping the meat in a beaten egg, followed by breadcrumbs and seasonings. In this recipe, I replaced the egg with my favourite buffalo wing sauce, and crushed up about one cup of fried onions into a breadcrumb consistency. For an extra kick, I added a package of ranch seasoning into the onions (usually I use homemade ranch seasoning, but I had an extra package kicking around). I’ve seen smaller packages of these fried onions in the salad dressing/crouton aisle at the grocery store. If you can’t find them, don’t sweat. Just substitute something else crunchy for the breading, like corn flakes – but don’t skip out on the ranch seasoning!
The chicken pieces were dunked into the buffalo wing sauce and rolled around in the onion and ranch powder mixture. Line up the chicken pieces on a parchment-lined baking sheet and bake at 400 F for about 20 minutes, or until the chicken is cooked through.

The buffalo wing sauce makes the chicken so tender, and with a crunchy coating and bite sized pieces, this chicken is perfectly poppable.

You guys, this chicken is the bomb. I’m not even kidding . . . I would make this (and eat it) every day if I could. And it got a double thumbs up from hubby – and my mama! She may or may not have kept the chicken I gave her to try all to herself. Hey, I’m not judging . . . I may or may not do the same thing!

Like I mentioned in my last post, we had some friends over to watch the Beyonce concert Super Bowl on Sunday night. Chili and baked potatoes are the perfect winter comfort foods, and are pretty low-maintenance when you’re feeding a crowd that includes hungry, burly, football-watching men. 🙂

I love trying new recipes, but I’m always skeptical of trying new things when I have to bring something somewhere, or feed company. Case in point: I made a brownie fruit pizza for my friend Melissa’s baby shower on Sunday, and it was an epic fail, presentation-wise. A brownie crust topped with a cream-cheese frosting and fresh berries – seems pretty foolproof, right? Well, it tasted great, but I think it sat on top of a hot stove for a few minutes before it was served, which caused it to melt. 😦 Look how nice it looked before I brought it to the hall!

Oh well – we still munched on it afterwards, and although it was a gooey mess, it was still delicious!

Anyway, all that said, chili in a Crock Pot is pretty hard to screw up, but I wanted to stick with a pretty basic recipe. However, I have heard (and read) several times that a certain unexpected ingredient adds a great kick to chili – chocolate! I was excited when I found this recipe and picked up everything I needed from the short list of ingredients at the grocery store.

I started the chili on Sunday morning by browning two pounds of ground beef (from Jepson’s Fresh Meats, of course!) with two chopped onions and four cloves of garlic, diced into small pieces.

When the meat was nicely browned and caramelized, I added the mixture to the Crock Pot along with two 28-ounce cans of diced tomatoes . . .

. . . an 18-ounce can of mixed beans . . .

. . . four additional minced garlic cloves and some spices: three tablespoons of chili powder, a tablespoon of cumin, a teaspoon each of salt and pepper.

And the two ingredients that made the chili stand out – a teaspoon of hot pepper sauce . . .

And two tablespoons of chopped baking chocolate. Yum!

Give the ingredients a good stir, set the temperature to low and let it simmer away for seven to eight hours!

I have to admit – I’m not a huge chili fan. I already told you about how much I hate tomatoes, and let’s face it – tomatoes are a main component of chili! But this recipe was pretty delicious, and I enjoyed it topped over a hot baked potato. 🙂 The rest of our guests seemed to like it too – I was counting on having leftovers for lunch, but it disappeared! Not that I’m complaining – I think the biggest compliment to any chef is having empty plates and serving dishes!

Alex’s bowl – a blurry picture, since he grabbed the bowl right away to gobble it down!

On to the baked potatoes: no real recipe here, just a bunch of baked potatoes scrubbed and poked, drizzled with olive oil and a sprinkle of sea salt and baked at 400 F for about an hour and a half, or until done. I made a whole bunch and baked them in recyclable aluminum trays covered with tin foil for easy cleanup. Serve the potatoes alongside chili with tons of toppings on the side . . .

And check out these adorable chocolate-covered strawberries my sweet friend Audrey made! Not a chili topping, but a delicious dessert! 🙂 We also munched on bacon-wrapped water chestnuts, buffalo chicken wing dip, meatballs and nachos. It was a feast, I tell ya, and the perfect Super Bowl (or any!) Sunday meal. I’m still full!

It’s been eight days and I’ve only blogged about dinner ONCE! And only three entries total. Major fail. Or, as the Kardashians would say, just maj.
(Edited to add: ew, did I really say that?)

In hopes of redeeming myself (and my language), I cooked up a delicious meal of my favourite comfort food, spaghetti and meatballs. It’s too easy – and delicious – for words. So much so that Alex and I ate in silence for probably five minutes while we inhaled. Nom.

I shared our sauce-making secrets (well, there’s really no secret – just a whole lotta love and passion!) last week. Pasta and sauce is truly mouthwatering on its own, but a girl’s gotta please her hubs and throw in a little meat here and there. Lucky for me, I’ve got a connection in that department. <shamlessplug> If you’re in the Hamilton, Ont. area, check out my stepdad and stepbrother’s stall at the Hamilton Farmers’ Market – Jepson’s Fresh Meats. Delicious beef and pork, and great guys to boot ;). Tell ’em I sent you! </shamelessplug>

Anyway. These little balls of meat are made from fresh ground beef and the addition of a few essentials. A pinch each of garlic salt, pepper, oregano, basil, fresh-grated parm and sweet red pepper flakes (which I forgot to photograph), plus an egg and about a quarter cup of breadcrumbs – enough to make sure the meatballs hold together.

Mix ’em all together and roll into perfect-sized little meatballs. Pop them on a cookie sheet and into the oven to broil for about 7 minutes, until they start to turn brown and caramelize. Yum.

Meanwhile, start the liquid gold – err, I mean sauce. For the least Italian person ever, Alex is super appreciative of the culture and food . . . so much so that he found it absurd that my grandparents wanted to order KFC the last time we were there for dinner. Hey, us foreigners love the colonel too! 😉 He also KNOWS not to get between me and these jars. Don’t you dare rinse it out until I’ve salvaged every last drop from the jar. This stuff is too precious to waste!

To the pot of sauce, I add a halved onion, a couple of cloves of garlic and spices to taste. (Note: these aren’t necessary if you’re using store-bought sauce, as they have their own flavours.) The onion wilts down and Alex eats it with the pasta – almost his favourite part. I added most of the same spices that I added to the meatballs – oregano, basil, red pepper flakes, S&P. I actually prefer the sauce plain with no added spices, but I’m learning to adapt. When the meatballs are nice and brown, add them into the sauce and cover to let them simmer away with the sauce. All those flavours permeating each bite of meatball . . . I’m almost salivating again.

Meantime, boil a pot of generously salted water. Don’t skip this step – the salt cooks right into the pasta and adds so much flavour to it. Tonight we had spaghettini – not as thick as spaghetti, and not as thin as angel hair – juuuuust perfect. When your pasta is ready, drain it and serve, topped with more freshly grated parmesan cheese.

Can I just say . . . drool. Trust me, this plate is totally worth skipping dessert for. It would have been even better served with a hunk of crusty bread, but I forgot to stop and pick a loaf up after work, and let’s face it – there are more than enough carbs in this dish.

Well, I’m off for my Friday night post-pasta nap! I’ve got lots more exciting things on the menu for this weekend, including delicious appetizers, a decadent dessert and the perfect Super Bowl Sunday dinner. Have a great night!

Thursday night at my mom’s house is always pasta night. It’s been like that for years – and I’m not even sure why, to tell you the truth. But no one ever asked what was for dinner on Thursdays – we knew it would be some kind of pasta, and it would always be delicious.

My family has been making tomato sauce for longer than I can remember. When tomatoes come into season at the end of August or early September, my grandfather goes on a hunt for the best looking tomatoes and buys bushels upon bushels.

We dedicate an entire day to making sauce. Sorting the tomatoes, washing them off, boiling them, feeding them through the sauce machine (I’m sure there’s a more technical term!), boiling the sauce and then jarring it. This past year we had 12 (or maybe more . . . ) bushels of tomatoes. It was one of our biggest years yet! I look forward to this day every year.

My adorable Nonno draining the boiled tomatoes.

A giant pot of sauce, ready for boiling and jarring.

The day always ends with a late-afternoon feast, including homemade wine, natch.

The ironic part of all of this is . . . I HATE tomatoes. I know. What kind of Italian hates tomatoes? Not only that, but I hate ketchup, and store-bought tomato sauce. The sauce we make is literally pure tomatoes, and it is the best.sauce.ever. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve forced myself to eat tomatoes more, and to not be afraid to order pasta at (certain) restaurants. But I’m definitely a tomato sauce snob.

All of this is to say that no matter what happens on Thursdays, I know I can walk into my mom’s house and smell sauce simmering and instantly be happier (luckily she only lives five minutes away!).

In the last year or so, since Alex and I have lived on our own, we haven’t held up the Thursday night pasta tradition. I know. Blasphemous. It’s just that Thursday nights have somehow become pizza-and-wing night or clean-out-the-fridge night. But in an attempt to eat better (and save money), we’ve been trying to turn this around. One of my faaaavourite food blogs, Iowa Girl Eats, is pro at making lighter versions of delicious restaurant-style food. Alex and I love everything Buffalo-related (well mostly the wings and hot sauce for him, and the shopping deals for me!), so naturally her recipe for buffalo chicken egg rolls stood out for me. Tangy ranch sauce is combined with perfectly spicy shredded buffalo chicken and sealed in an egg roll wrapper, baked to crisp perfection.

I seasoned two chicken breasts with salt and pepper, then pan fried in a teaspoon of olive oil until golden brown. I’ve read on Pinterest that a stand mixer comes in handy when shredding chicken, and I’ve been converted. Add your chicken breasts (I had cut mine into a few smaller pieces before hand, but I’m not sure this was necessary) and turn your mixer on to medium. Within a few minutes, my chicken was perfectly shredded.

I added a dash of my favourite Buffalo-style wing sauce and spooned about two tablespoons full of shredded chicken into an egg roll wrapper with some ranch dressing (you can use blue cheese if you want, but I prefer ranch!).

Wrapped up and baked for 20 minutes at 400 F (my personal preference, 425 F was too high in my oven), these buffalo chicken egg rolls were a perfect lighter alternative to chicken wings. I chopped up some broccoli and drizzled it with olive oil, garlic salt, fresh cracked pepper and a dash of parmesan cheese and baked it right along the egg rolls for the same amount of time, and threw some potatoes in my beloved ActiFry, and voila!